Allie & Company
by LucyCrewe11
Summary: Allie, Will, Marco, Lance, Jen, and Miles live together after escaping from the School. Hidden away from 'normal' people, and even a certain "other flock" they've never met, they think or at least HOPE they're safe, but nothing lasts forever, including safety. Possible Allie/Will. Largely AUish.
1. 1

**AN: Just finished reading the second Maximum Ride book (thanks so much, Cassidy, if by any chance you're reading this!) and this idea popped into my head and DEMANDED to be written. Hope somebody reads/likes this, LOL. **

Here's the thing: you're not _supposed _to know how to ride a horse the first time you hop on the back of one. Especially if the horse in question isn't even trained, totally wild.

But I do.

Or, at least, I just did just now, anyway.

Strangely enough, I'm not thinking about that. It's funny how little you think about how weird things are when you're running for your life.

Like right this second, for instance. Here I am, riding on the back of some random white horse, being chased. Fact that this horse is wild and I've never ridden before in my life? Yeah, not too important.

I can outrun most people, most humans. We all can. Even Miles and Jen; and Miles is _hopelessly_ unathletic and Jen's just a fifteen year old girl who's really great at doing back-flips and cartwheels, but distance track in general, the kind that requires endurance? Um, not really. But none of us can go faster than a big dog. Not even flying.

Yeah, that's right, we can _fly_.

Well, usually, when we don't accidentally hurt ourselves or our wings (yes, yes, _wings_; you read that right, more on that a little later, okay?) aren't tucked up in clothes that aren't made specifically to fit them, anyway.

But my jacket, and the bullet-proof vest I stole, doesn't exactly give me room to spread out my wings and fly. So, instead, I'm on the back of this animal, not even worrying about the fact that I have no idea what in God's name I'm _doing_.

I hear growling. They're gaining on me. How are those stupid brutes keeping up with this freaking _stallion_?

At least, I _think_ it's a stallion. I didn't exactly have time to stick my head under it and check. And, frankly, thanks to my complete lack of knowledge of all things horsey, I probably wouldn't have known for sure even if I _had_.

The things that were chasing after me were Erasers. I'm not even sure why they call them that. All you need to know now is that, like me and my flock (again, more on that in a bit), they're human/animal hybrids. They're part wolf, part human. And if you think that's adorable or _hot_, because you're a Twilight junkie who's hopelessly out of touch with reality and in love with Jacob Black, or you've just read Blood and Chocolate one too many times, please get a grip.

Erasers are not _boyfriends_. They're_ creepy_. And they don't exactly live long enough to care about marriage or romance or whatever. So if the fact that they can tear your whole face off (and _will_ if you get in their way while they're after us, or others _like_ us) doesn't turn you off, their impeding expiration date should.

Plus also, they have dirt all over them, and B.O., and some of the older ones are missing half their teeth.

The Erasers, when they're in their wolfish form, are big, ugly, and ruthless. They can run like the dogs they command. They're good at what they do. And, right now, what they do is hunt us. Unfortunately. And telling them to get a life doesn't work; it just seems to enrage them further. Miles tried that once. Trust me, it wasn't pretty.

Suddenly, the horse rears, frightened. (Gee, think those mutant wolf things have anything to do with that?)

I find myself falling.

One shriek escapes my lips. Then I'm on the ground, my back and tucked up wings _killing_ me. It's a hard landing. Not like _rock_ hard, more like packed-in sand hard.

My eyes are closed. I think I'm unconscious. Except, don't unconscious people stop, well, being _conscious_? Don't their thoughts go away while they're lying there, knocked out cold?

Not me. I can't move, but I can feel. And I can think.

All I can do is think.

Think about how I failed, how they Erasers will get me, how my luck has finally run out and I'm done for.

Done for. Done living, before I've even really lived to begin with.

That's when my eyes shoot open.


	2. 2

I panted for breath, waking up on the floor of my bedroom.

No _wonder_ I was so sore and my wings and backside smarted like crazy! I'd fallen out of bed again.

Always those same stupid dreams, about trying to run away from the School, being chased by those hideous Erasers. And that wasn't even how it happened. I hadn't been on my own, and while I presumably _could _have gotten on a horse (me and the rest of the flock, well, we _have _been known to be able to adapt to things first try in emergency situations), I hadn't actually. We'd all gotten out _together_, and we'd had help: an inside job.

We were like a family. All six of us. Only Marco and Will are related by blood (half-brothers or something, we think), but we're all family anyway. Partly because we're all each other has.

There's Will, age seventeen, aka the oldest. That alone wouldn't make him the leader, except, he's actually pretty great at it. And he's good at delegating when need be. I sort of think of us as co-leaders of the flock sometimes. He's rarely ever made an important life decision that involves all of us without telling me about it and letting me put it to a vote with the others. I'd never say so out loud, but Will's actually my favorite. I seriously don't know what I'd do without him. Whenever he comes into view, even just coming down the stairs for breakfast in the morning, I usually find I can't stop smiling.

Marco. Well, he's a different story. He and Will are as different as medieval knight is from a mafia hitman. He's definitely one of us, he belongs here, and I'm pretty sure deep down he cares about all of us and would do anything to keep us safe, but he sort of creeps me out every once in a while. He has this whole bitter, withering stare thing going when he gets in one of those rare moods of his. Plus, he can be a bit of a bully. And, thing is, bullies aren't known for being fair. If there's one thing in life I can't stand, it's people who think they can get away with doing something they know is wrong. I'm very, _very _big on fairness. Marco tries to get away with something he knows is wrong just about every other day. But, truth is, he's family, and as much as I may _want_ to kill him sometimes, I never literally _would_. I'd trust him with my life.

Next is Lance. Will calls him the human garbage disposal. Because, trust me, the boy can _eat_. We all eat more than normal people, but Lance could probably out-eat a _goat_. He's sort of quiet and slow sometimes on an almost day-to-day basis, but in a fight he has no match. He also happens to be Will's best friend. He and Jen (the youngest of our flock) met Will at the School before any of us did. They were really little at the time, and someone put their cages close together. They started whispering back and forth and bonded for life. Lance doesn't talk to me much. I'm not sure why, I don't think he's _shy_, exactly, just that our upbringing affected him in a slightly different way from the rest of us. While the rest of us (except for maybe Marco) run our mouths and get into trouble, constantly bickering with each other, he sort of just avoids confrontation when he can. It's like the flight in fight or flight except he doesn't actually run off anywhere. He just stares blankly like he couldn't care less about whatever the issue is or gets distracted by something else.

Next comes Miles. How could I possibly begin to explain Miles? Well, he's smart. And a smart _aleck_. While most of us got the fighting skills and flexibility, somehow he wound up with most of the brains. A fact he often sees fit to rub in our faces. He knows everything. Or, at least, he _thinks _he does.

And, you know what? Sometimes, I think maybe he's right.

But, truth be told, aside from Will, Miles is the one I care most about. He was the first friend I ever made. That first time I talked to him, he told me we'd get in trouble, that I was, how did he put it? I think his words were, 'making a tactical error of monumental proportions'. (And, yes, he _does_ pretty much always talk like that.)

"They can put me in a cage," I'd said, "but I can still be friends with whoever I want." Except normal kids, since I never got to meet any. "Including you."

His snide response: "Who said I wanted to be your friend?"

"If you don't want to be friends, why are you still talking to me?"

"But I'm not."

"Ah, but by saying you're not talking to me, you _are_ talking to me. Check and mate."

Like Jen, Lance, and Will, our cages were pretty close for a while there and in the end he just got used to me.

Jen's the youngest, at fifteen. She's also very pretty and Will's, for lack of a better term, 'love interest'. I mean, how could he _not_ fall in love with her? Given, we didn't have a lot of downtime growing up, but she was always around him. She's pretty, her wings are white and glossy (supposedly dove's wings, but on her they look more like angel wings), she can jump like a leopard, doing complicated flips in the air, and she's always _nice_. I've never heard her say a mean word to anyone. She never even tells Miles to shut up when he annoys her. Oh, she'll yell and fuss and get hysterical with us in family spats, she's not quite as introverted as Lance, but she never seems to say anything harsh she has to take back. She's as well-versed as a dang _queen_. Jen has never had her foot in her mouth, so to speak.

I try not to think about the fact that I sometimes wonder if I don't secretly wish, if things were different, if we weren't practically _always_ on edge, if I didn't love Jen like a sister and couldn't stand the thought of hurting her, that Will would be romantically interested in _me_.

But they make each other happy, and, most of the time, that's good enough for me.

"Ahh..." I groaned as I sat up. "Ow."

Once I had stretched and pulled a robe over my pajamas, I started for the kitchen. Nothing to shake off that horrible nightmare like a good breakfast.

I had to go down the carpeted hallway and two small flights of stairs. There was a picture on one of the walls right where the first set of stairs started, of all of us and Mr. Moore.

I tried not to look at it. It made me too sad, since we had no idea what happened to him.

I mean, we owed our freedom to his breaking us out of there and helping us escape. Not to mention he was the closest thing we'd ever had to a parental figure in our short, miserable lives. And he'd been gone for almost a year now. Gone where? We didn't know.

I _did_ look at the small book-cart in the hall. There's a library downstairs, in the basement, and every weekend Miles goes down there and loads it with books we might find interesting for the next seven days or so. He dusts them off and makes sure the single florescent light-bulb down there is still working. Oh, and that moths or moisture haven't damaged anything useful or else fairly new (as in, written and/or put down there sometime _this_ century). Then we wheel the cart down the hall between our rooms for a week until it's time for Miles to go down there again.

There was this one book, a text book on Medieval literature, all about King Arthur, and I felt my fingers itching to pick it up. I kind of _hate _Camelot and the Middle Ages, but I've always been drawn to certain text books about that time period. And partly it's to do with the people on the back, the two writers. My two, I'll admit it, _favorite_ writers. Even though I don't know them, I like them for _them_, and not for the nonsense they write. They're a husband and wife and they seem so friendly and normal and, well, they're exactly the kind of parents I wish I had. Sort of dorky, but appealingly so; firm but not stern, not bossy.

Miles hasn't ever said anything, but each week, without fail, he makes sure at least one of the books in the cart is something written by them. By one Mr. and Mrs. Pennington.

"Hey, Allie."

At the top of the stairs, I turned when I heard my name. "Oh, it's you. Hey, Will." I smiled, of course.

"You don't look so good," Will noted. "Nightmares again?"

I nodded. "You?"

"No, I'm okay."

The stairs were wide enough that we were able to walk side by side down them, talking.

"Are the others up yet?"

"Lance is still asleep. Jen and Marco are awake and fighting over possession of the TV remote, last I saw them, about five minutes ago. I have no idea where Miles is."

In the kitchen, Will opened the fridge. "Eggs and bacon sound good?"

"Sounds _great_."

Suddenly a notebook fell from the ceiling and hit Will on the head.

"Um, that's mine."

"Oh, here you go." Will reached up and handed the notebook to an out-stretched arm directly above us.

"Thanks, Will."

"No problem."

I yawned. Then I stopped, mid-yawn.

Will and I looked at each other, confused.

_Wait a minute..._

Simultaneously, our eyes rolled up to the ceiling.

Miles was hanging from the big chandelier (it's electric, but we never used it, because the bulbs were blown and the kitchen's plenty bright enough without it) above the island, suspended by the back of his shirt collar.

Will and I groaned loudly. "_Marco_," we both said at the same time.

"I'm starting to get a nosebleed," Miles informed us. He flapped his wings, but the shirt was knotted so that he couldn't get it off just by pushing upwards instead of down. Marco was pretty thorough when it came to stuff like that. "Could one of you _please_ get me down from here?"

"Allie, get Miles untangled from the chandelier," Will told me. "I'll deal with Marco."

"I'd do it," Miles put in. "I'm ready to, as they say, throw-down with him, but Will should do it because he's his brother."

"_Half_-brother," Will growled, like he always does when Marco does something stupid.

Taking off my robe so that I could use my wings (my pajama top has slits in it for that, but my robe doesn't) I flew up to untie his shirt and set him free.

As soon as I'd gotten him back down on the kitchen floor again, Miles grasped his head in pain and went, "Gah!"

"Miles?"

"Oh, _great_..." He grimaced. "I just saw what Marco is going to do me _tomorrow_."

Yeah, that's another thing about Miles. Just a small thing, something I might have forgotten to mention earlier.

He can see the future.

**AN: Reviews most welcome!**


	3. 3

It's not like he _always _knows what's going to happen or anything. Nah, apparently the School never did experiments that actually proved 100% useful with no downside. It's more like every once in a while Miles gets sent an instant headache/video message from somewhere in that mess of scrambled DNA inside that supercomputer brain of his. He's mentioned before that it's gotten worse as he's gotten older (well, the extra experiments they did on him before Mr. Moore busted us all out of there probably didn't _help_) and now it feels like he's being hit in the head with a brick.

Anyway, you would think that seeing the future would at least give him some kind of clue as to how to avoid getting himself on Marco's bad side, but it tends to make things worse. At least twice, I'm convinced Miles, in an attempt to thwart the future in question, _made _it happen.

But regardless of whose fault it actually was, whether or not Miles had caused it this time, Will was not happy.

And, given the fact that Miles was hanging from the stinking chandelier while Marco was watching the tube, it was pretty easy to make a quick assumption and decide who was the victim here.

Hint: not Marco.

"Marco!" I could hear Will's voice in the next room over.

It helped that there wasn't a door there. Just a tunnel-like hallway space followed by a small sandstone-colored arch.

"What do _you_ want?"

"Why did you hang Miles from the chandelier?"

"Felt like it," he grumbled. "He was bragging again."

Please, this was _Miles_. He might as well have complained that he was _breathing _again.

"I've told you to stop messing with him. This has gone far_ enough_, Marco! I'm flock-leader and I'm not happy about this."

"What are you going to do?" Marco laughed, uncaring. "Hit me?"

"You're not worth the sore fist." That wasn't it; he didn't want to hit his brother. He didn't want to hit any of us. The only people Will would ever hit without a second thought were the Erasers. And they hardly counted as 'people'. They were less human even than we were. "Just go into the kitchen and get ready to help me fix breakfast before I change my mind."

Jen, followed by a glowering Marco, came into the kitchen. Will was right behind them.

"Morning, Allie."

"Morning, Jen," I replied.

Pressing a Kleenex to his slightly bloody nose, Miles smiled (a little cockily for someone who had just been dangling helplessly not even five minutes ago, I thought) as Marco went past him.

He noticed. "He can't protect you twenty-four hours a day," he reminded him a low hiss.

"Oh, wow." Miles feigned shock, his eyes widened with faux-amazment. "You know that there are twenty-four hours in a day? You must be _evolving_."

"Play _nice_, boys," Jen chirped, lowering her red-gold eyebrows at them pointedly. She handed Will a mixing bowl.

"After breakfast is ready, I'm going back to the living room to watch TV," Marco declared.

"Why don't _I _get a turn with the TV?" Miles whined. "I never get to see my shows."

"Maybe because most of us aren't interested in My Big Fat Game of Thrones Themed Wedding," Marco snapped.

Miles frowned at him. "There's no such show."

"Yeah, but you're waiting eagerly, right?" Marco said, sneering.

"Nah, it's not missing _your _future life story for," Miles shot back. "You know, America's Most Wanted?"

Jen giggled.

Will gave her a sharp 'don't make it worse' look.

"That's not funny," Jen lied quickly, still fighting back those giggles.

I hid my smile behind a glass of milk.

Lance finally showed up, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his wrist. "Mornin'."

"Technically," I finally put in, now that I had my own secret desire to laugh under near-complete control. "We're _all _America's Most Wanted. No one can ever find out about us."

"Correction," Will said. "We're the _School's_ most wanted. They don't want America finding out about us."

"Guess that puts a damper on your plans to become President of this here United States, huh, Bro?" Marco asked, a little meanly.

"You've been reading my journal again, haven't you?"

"Nope." He smirked, like he had one on him. I _hate_ it when Marco does that. "I have a better information source."

"I'm sorry, Will," Miles confessed, giving Marco the stink-eye. "He _made_ me tell."

"Well, how did _you_ find out?" Will wanted to know.

"I heard you telling Allie about it," he admitted. Then he added, "Two weeks before you actually did."

No, that's not _creepy_ or anything, that Miles can hear our conversations weeks ahead of time. Nope, not creepy at all.

"Stop tormenting Miles, Marco," Will said. "I _mean_ it."

"I'm _helping_ him," Marco insisted. "The kid's a major torture risk if someone captures him. If he's used to it here, maybe he won't sing so easy in a kidnapping situation."

"I am _not_ a torture risk!" Miles said indignantly.

Marco rolled his eyes. "Oh, yeah?" He grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back, under one of his wings. "Say, Miles, what's the combination to the safe where we keep the family money?"

There was good reason Will never gave it to him. Miles was _way_ more responsible when it came to things like that, and we were pretty dang poor, so letting Marco run us amuck financially was not an option.

"I'm not telling _you_!" Miles grunted.

He tightened his grip. "Tell me."

"One," he groaned. "Two..." Then he blurted, "Three-four-five!"

Marco pushed him hard against the back of his chair, still twisting his arm. "Give me the combination or you're going back on the chandelier."

"_Stop_ it!" I screeched, running over and giving Marco a quick roundhouse kick to the posterior.

Will pulled him off of Miles. "What is _wrong _with you?"

"This is what we're designed for," Marco growled. "Isn't it? We're fighting machines."

"That's not what Mr. Moore taught us," I told him flatly. "We'll never be normal, but we're not monsters."

"Oh, yes," snorted Marco, his eyes darkening with an anger I didn't understand. "_Mr. Moore _is the example you want to use when it comes to lack of inflicting harm on others."

"What the heck is _that_ supposed to mean?" I demanded.

"Dude," said Lance softly, "he didn't leave us by choice. _They_ probably got him. He might even be, like, dead or something. He was good to us, Man."

"He set us free," Jen said.

"And brought us here," I added.

Will nodded.

Marco looked unimpressed. "Whatever."

"Where are you going?" Will asked, noticing Marco was heading for the way out of the kitchen that led to one of the entryways/exits.

"Out."

"What about breakfast?"

"I'll dumpster dive," he said over his shoulder. "Like the freaking half-seagull I am."

Miles made an L with his fingers and pressed it to his forehead.

I slapped him upside the head. "Don't do that."

After a while, breakfast was ready and Will and Jen were loading plates while I set napkins and forks on the island we were gathered around with chairs and mismatched stools.

"Hey, Allie, I have a prediction for you," Miles told me. "Forgot to tell you about it."

"What did you see _this_ time?" I sighed.

He handed me a slip of paper.

Opening it, I read out loud, "_A very clever, quick boy will steal bacon off your plate_."

I saw his hand snake out, his fingers hovering over my plate.

Grinning, my own hand shot out and grabbed onto his wrist. "Not a quick _enough_ boy, apparently."

**AN: Please review.**


	4. 4

**AN: Because I am attempting to write this in a similar style to the MR (Max Ride) books, while most chapters will be Allie's first-person POV, a few chapters will be third-person centering around a different character (s). **

Marco slammed the door on his way out, even though he was fairly sure the others wouldn't be able to hear it from the kitchen.

The rest of the flock didn't know what he did. They all missed Mr. Moore and acted as if he was some kind of Martyr who most likely died on their behalf.

In their eyes, he was their benefactor; their hero, even.

But none of them knew the truth. Not the way Marco knew it.

Mr. Moore wasn't the person they all thought he was. And he wasn't dead or actually missing, either.

Marco knew exactly where Mr. Moore was: aka, back at the school. He'd left them to report back. This was all a test. This was all a part of Moore's (and the School's) horrendous plans for their unwitting mutant bird kids. But, of course, he couldn't tell the others, even if he thought they'd believe him. The whole place was probably bugged. He couldn't say anything that would let on how much he knew. Mr. Moore had to trust him, or at least think he was nothing but one bitter ball of anger who'd turn on his flock if need be, if fate gave him a chance to take his brother's head position. One who would do whatever the white coats wanted, should the time come. It had to be a battle of wits; him playing them while they-stupidly-thought they were the ones playing him. If they knew he was on to them... Well, he didn't even want to _think_ about what they might do.

The most merciful thing he could possibly imagine them doing was making him Eraser-chow one day when he went out for a walk (or fly) to clear his head.

The least?

Taking him back to the School. Back to life in a cage.

It was a hard burden, knowing what he knew and having to pretend. Pretending he missed a back-stabbing, cold-blooded traitor like Mr. Moore was bad _enough_; pretending he actually felt safe in their home, protected and hidden away from the people who'd made them like this, who'd turned them into part-bird freaks, was almost unbearable most days.

It helped a little, though, he guessed, that this knowledge made him genuinely irksome, playing into his embittered 'bad seed' of the flock persona.

Sometimes Marco wondered what would have happened, how he would feel now, if he had never walked in at the wrong moment and overheard Mr. Moore's phone conversation.

They were all supposed to be out flying, stretching their wings. Mr. Moore had been very big on exercise. At least once every two days, after 'checking that the coast was clear' by peering up at the nearby skies with a pair of binoculars Marco now secretly longed to smash just so he could have the satisfaction of destroying something Mr. Moore had used but couldn't because Will and Allie used them to keep an eye out for Erasers, he would send them outside to fly around, so long as they didn't go too far from home in one shot. They were supposed to check in with him before going more than ten miles in any direction.

Which was exactly why Marco had come in. He'd wanted to go further. The others were bothering him and he wanted to fly farther away than they'd been allowed so he could have some time to himself. And he went inside to ask Moore's permission. Like an idiot, he'd believed back then (just as the others believed _now_) that Mr. Moore had their best interests at heart. He'd followed the rules then, because they'd seemed to make sense.

_Lots_ of things that no longer did had seemed to make sense in those days. All other adults had been risks, people who might rat them out and have them sent back to the School or else put in a flippin' zoo or sideshow, but Mr. Moore was the good guy. He was the only grown-up good guy they'd ever known. He'd saved them, let them go free. He treated them like they were his own children; especially Allie and Miles, who'd been closest to him because he'd spent more time with them in the labs before 'deciding to do the right thing' and break all the bird kids out of the School for good.

Everything in Marco's small, sheltered world had changed that day.

The tiny green light on the telephone in the living room had flashed, blinking on and off, catching his eye as he walked by it, and Marco, realizing it meant the upstairs line (they had two telephones, and until then he'd never thought to wonder why Mr. Moore, who'd said they had to be separated from the rest of the world if they didn't want to be found, even monitoring their internet usage, installed them, who he would even need to call) was in use. Curiously, he'd picked it up. The voices he heard made the blood in his veins turn to ice.

"The one who tells the future is too risky," said one cold, calculating voice. "We can't monitor what he sees. The science of what we did to his brain is still in its infancy. If he sees something that tips the others off, I'm holding you personally responsible. You shouldn't have taken all six of them."

"He's not the dangerous one," replied Mr. Moore. "He gets a few flashes he barely understands and the occasional migraine. I can usually calm him down if he gets too worked up. Besides, he's a pleaser. He'd bend over backwards to make me like him. It's the oldest boy that concerns me more. If any of them would be smart enough to figure out this whole thing is a test, it's him. And he's too _good_; he'll never understand it from our point of view. Luckily, he's polite as long as he trusts me. Sometimes I almost wish the whole flock could be like that."

Marco had almost dropped the phone. _No..._ Mr. Moore couldn't still be working for the School! This has to be a mistake.

He slammed the phone down and ran back outside.

"Hang on, I thought I heard a noise," Mr. Moore had said, coming down the stairs, thankfully _after_ Marco was gone, perched on the far edge of the roof with his wings spread out behind him like a gargoyle. "One of them might be coming in." He went to the door the sound had come from, but there was no one there. "False alarm, Mark, please continue what you were saying. We have five minutes before they come back."

Marco had wished he really _was_ a stone carving of a winged creature. He wished they _all_ were, the whole flock. Then no one would ever want to hurt them again.

Mentally deranged scientists didn't experiment on stone, just flesh and blood.

**AN: Review if you like.**


	5. 5

Okay, so a little history.

Though I take it you've gathered bits and pieces of our story already.

So, yes, to recap, we're part bird, mad science experiments escaped from a place called the School. And we've already covered the whole Erasers thing pretty thoroughly. Oh, and the bit where we're only free because Mr. Moore felt sorry for us and pulled a massive prison break, helping us all escape.

Jen, like I said, is part dove, and Marco wasn't kidding when he said that about being a seagull. That's what they crossed his genes with: seagull DNA.

Me and Will, we're actually both crossed with the DNA of a falcon. Peregrine Falcon, I think.

I really didn't understand why they would make two falcons. I was glad Will and I shared that common bond, that we both understood the pleasures and pains that came from being part falcon and all, but _still_. It just didn't make much sense. I mean, they only made one of every other bird gene-slice experiment, far as I know. I once heard some of those awful white coats whispering about how they should have crossed me over with a swan instead; but someone else in the lab said I was 'born to be a falcon girl'.

Um, no. I was born to be a _human_ girl. _Obviously_. For such smart people, scientists sure can be stupid.

Lance's genes are crossed with a Wandering Albatross. Because of this, his wingspan is bigger than any of ours.

Miles is part Great Horned Owl. Which is why, every now and then, when he annoys the heck out of me or gets something wrong for _once_ (a frustratingly rare occurrence), I've been known to snap, "Nice going, _Archimedes_!" at him.

But, hey, I'm not _mean_ about it or anything. And it's _a lot_ nicer than what Marco used to do. Which was to literally start hooting whenever Miles walked in the room. After we saw Finding Nemo on TV, though, the next time Marco hooted, Miles just snorted, rolled his eyes, and said, "Mine? Mine? Mine?" pointedly. That shut him up good. He hasn't made any hooting noises since. (Nah, now he just ties him to chandeliers and threatens him with bodily harm whenever he feels like it, but we're working on that.)

Due to our bird DNA, we all have lighter bones (Miles says we wouldn't be able to fly, wings or no wings, if this wasn't the case; he explained the science of it to me in mind-numbing detail, but most of it sounded like a foreign language and eventually he got tired of the confused looks I shot him and gave up) and, as I think I touched on before, we need to take in more food than ordinary kids. When most kids could swallow about two eggs at breakfast, Jen, Marco, Will, and I ate about six and often times were more than willing to go back for seconds. Miles ate a little less, for some reason, when he was younger, but he's outgrown that and now he eats as much (if not more than) any of us with the exception of Lance. Lance was eating a dozen or so eggs by the time he was eight. Now a teenager, he can take two dozen, six pieces of bacon, _and _still have room for a minimum of three pieces of toast. And by lunch, I guarantee you, he'll be hungry again.

At the School, sometimes they didn't feed us enough. They did by way of routine, but there were these tests they ran on us where they wanted to see how less food would effect our bodies. Will's told me that _everything_ had started looking like food to him, even pencils and tabletops.

Eventually it was over, though, and they started feeding us regularly again.

But, then, as our torment never ended, they wanted to see, now that we were eating again, how long and far we could run without collapsing.

I never really collapsed, though after a bit I stopped running, letting them shock me with tasers all they wanted. I was too tired to fight them. Normally, I loved running; Will and me, on foot (just like in the sky), we're the fastest out of the whole flock. After we got free and became friends, we were constantly racing. But this was too much for me.

I couldn't fly away, not only because of exhaustion, but also due to the fact above the track they had me running in, the sky was closed off, like a zoo enclosure. I could go pretty high, straight up to the sleek steel bars, but I couldn't escape that way.

Miles fainted. He couldn't keep going and he blacked out. He wasn't in there at the same time as me. I'd been sleeping in my cage, tired and still shaking from being zapped so many times, when they brought him back, as limp as...

Well, as limp as a dead bird.

I sat up in the cage, almost hitting my head in the process, and screamed. I thought he _was _dead. Having very few social skills and basically only one friend at this point in my life, I was beside myself. I couldn't understand it. I knew what death _was_ of course, but actually seeing him, thinking he was dead... My mind just couldn't get a grip on the concept. Thinking that they'd killed him, I most likely would have shouted until my lungs burst, except, one of the white coats, when he heard me calling him a rather choice name, that, now when I think about it, was probably more insulting to his _mom_, put a sheet over my cage as if I was nothing but a big stupid bird and the darkness would muffle me.

It did. But not for the reason he thought. I was furious and frightened. My shouts turned to weeping. Quiet weeping.

I heard them put Miles back in his cage next to mine and I remember thinking: _Oh, they weren't _supposed_ to kill him, their boss is going to be mad, so they'll just pretend he died in there._

I hated them even more for that.

There was still a sheet over my cage. No one thought to take it off. All the lights in the lab were turned off and the white coats had left. I had cried myself out and was staring at my bare feet. They didn't really feel so cold, even though the air conditioning in the lab had been left on, but two of my toes, I noticed, had turned a somewhat bluish hue.

That was when I heard a stirring in the cage next to mine.

Miles had come to.

And here I'd thought he was dead. "Miles?"

I got a low moan and a finger stuck through the bars of the cage, under the sheet, for an answer. It was enough. I was contented with that.

Even before I'd known Mr. Moore was going to break us out, I'd liked him best of all the white coats. I hated them _all_, but Mr. Moore never zapped us with tasers, or hit us, or underfed us, and when he talked to us, it was like he was talking to a _person_, not a _thing_, not an _it_.

Miles especially tried to get on his good side. He was a real suck up. But, for some reason,_ I_ was the one Moore liked best. Miles was a very close second, however, I'm pretty sure I was his favorite. Maybe because I didn't_ try_ so hard; I just talked to him in a way that felt natural. There was so little normality in my life that, being nice to him? Yeah, it just felt kind of _right_. I knew he didn't always agree with the way the other white coats treated us. That was good enough for me. Me, who knew so little kindness, whose best friend lived, not in a house next door, but a cage and/or crate stacked close to mine.

Mr. Moore used to tell us both about the others. Growing up like we did, it was easy for Miles and I to think we were the center of the universe. The center of a very cruel universe where death was preferable to life, but the center of it nonetheless. We so rarely saw anyone else. I'd seen Will a handful of times, in passing, being led by one white coat while I was being taken back to my cage by another. I think I caught a glimpse of Marco _once_. When Will and I finally met up again, I remember feeling very happy, constantly having this notion like I knew him, though we'd never really spoken. When Mr. Moore told me that there were more of them, it was like a fairytale. He told me about Jen and Lance, but also about another flock altogether. He said he was going to help Miles and myself escape, along with Jen, Lance, Will, and Marco, and we'd all be a family, looking out for each other, and that another rogue white coat, Jeb Batchelder, was going to help the other flock escape.

When I asked why we couldn't all live together, he simply said it would be easier to get caught that way. Two families had a better chance of survival than one. Someone would notice one family with twelve kids, most of them teenagers, being looked after by two middle-aged men, quicker than they'd notice two families with only six kids and their dad that tended to just keep to themselves.

It seemed to make sense at the time, so I nodded. I just wanted to go. I wanted to be free.

Our house was a mansion in the middle of the woods. One wing of it is actually sunk in and several beams are rotted (there's even an opening where a _tree_ grew into the wall), but thankfully Mr. Moore showed us all how to keep up the remaining half. Will and Lance usually took care of that, once they knew what they were doing. Sometimes Marco helped them. Jen and Miles were pretty useless at that kind of thing. I offered to help a couple of times, but usually they got on without me. We just kept the bad part of the house closed up, hoped for the best, and went on living.

We learned about TV when Mr. Moore announced we all had to hide in one of the hall closets upstairs because a cable guy was coming. He was going to set up channels and DSL for us. None of us had any idea what it meant, but we trusted Mr. Moore when he said we'd be safer if the person coming over just thought he was a bachelor living alone in the woods and never saw us.

So we stayed, quiet as mice, in the closest, until two hours later, when he told us we could come out.

We learned an awful lot about pop-culture and at a freakishly fast rate. We loved most shows, especially cartoons. They were a novelty to us. No one at the School had ever thought to let us watch cartoons. Because no one thought of us as real kids. We couldn't stand Pinky and the Brain, though. Probably on account of the subject matter. Gene slicing wasn't funny or whimsical to us; it was a painful reminder of our past. Jen started crying when she saw the theme song come on, Marco hid under the coffee table, Lance buried his head in the couch, and Miles and Will were going to crack the TV open and try to break Pinky and Brain out of the lab just like Moore rescued us.

It took a while, but eventually Mr. Moore managed to explain that they weren't real.

"What about the Midnight Society?" Jen had wanted to know. "Are they fake too?"

"What about Forrest Gump?" Lance put in.

"What about Buffy?" Marco demanded, sticking his back out from under the coffee table.

"Of course _she's_ fake," snorted Miles in a superior, 'well, _duh_', sort of tone. "There's no such thing as vampires or vampire slayers."

"Says the boy who wanted to rescue a pair of _talking mice_," Marco snapped.

Mr. Moore rubbed his temples and sent us to bed early that day.

Every once in a while, when I thought back on the way things were, I'd find myself wishing we hadn't been such wackos. That we'd been nice, normal kids, aside from the fact that we had wings. That we hadn't made things so difficult for him.

I thought maybe the man who saved our lives and taught us what it meant to be human deserved better.

**AN: Pleaseth to review.**


	6. 6

"Blue," I said, looking nervously at the water testing strip after using an eye-dropper to put a few drops of our tap water on it. "_Blue_..." I pulled out Mr. Moore's old laptop and hastily typed into the Google search engine. "Blue, what does that _mean_?"

"Our house is pregnant?" Miles suggested smartly, his month full of dill pickle. He had the open jar in his lap and had eaten his way through more than half of its contents.

"You're no help," I grunted.

"Yeah, well, being helpful wasn't in my job description as the family wiseguy."

"And not letting Marco beat the snot out of you wasn't in mine," I pointed out. I didn't actually_ mean_ it, obviously. I would have never really let Marco hurt him, not if I was around to stop it, but he totally bought it.

"Enough dilly dally." He put the lid back on the pickle jar, wiped his fingers off on a paper towel, and slid the laptop over towards himself. "Let's get down to business and solve this blue water problem, shall we?"

I sighed, feeling relieved and contented. In a few minutes, I knew, Miles would have figured out if there was anything contaminating our water and, if so, have it fixed before sunset.

Now that I had some extra time on my hands (Miles tended to pretty much take over whatever project he was handed, so the water deal was no longer my problem, though testing it in the first place _was _actually kind of fun, sort of like I imagined taking Chemistry classes in school might be like), I decided to go and see what Will was up to.

He wasn't anywhere in the house, so I checked one of his favorite places outside. It was a little chunk of land, not a half mile from the mansion, pretty enough I guess, but unremarkable unless you're looking for it in particular. Usually we just flew right by there without a second thought. Literally.

But, anyway, Will really liked it.

I'd find him sitting under a tree, looking thoughtful and quiet. Most of the time, I left him alone, but he didn't seem to mind the company. Both times that I'd decided to invite myself over to his favorite spot, he'd said it was okay with him if I stayed.

Jen never sat there with him because she claimed the dirt around the tree's base was almost always soggy and she hated getting her bottom wet. Plus, she just wasn't as in to sitting, thinking, and talking as Will was. She preferred to actually be _doing_ something. To her, talking meant _chatter_, not deep conversation. The only thing of importance she cared about was the same thing we all did: whether our luck would run out and they'd make us go back to the School someday. Aside from that, it was mostly frivolous stuff.

"Allie?" Will asked, without looking up.

I didn't bother asking how he knew it was me. That would have been a stupid question. Who _else_ ever followed him out there? "Yeah?"

"Do you ever get the feeling like this isn't the first time you've lived?"

Um, no. "What do you mean?" It seemed like a pretty weird thing to ask.

"I mean, can you remember back to before they..." His eyes closed. "Before they turned us into birds?" His eyes opened again, looking at me like he just needed someone to tell him he wasn't psycho.

He wasn't. But, no, I didn't. None of us could; we were too little, basically babies, when they experimented on us. No one could remember that far back.

When I told him this, though, he said something that made my blood run cold. Something that had been on my mind a few times before though I'd never really shared it with him.

"Allie, why do you think they needed two falcons?"

"I... I don't know." I tried (and, I think, _failed_, mostly) to make my voice sound cheerful. "In case they messed up and killed one of us?"

"There's one owl," he said, "one seagull... Why two falcons?"

"I think there are two doves," I pointed out. "Jen in our flock. And the little girl in the other one. Moore mentioned her a couple of times."

"But that flock wasn't even in the same wing of the building as us. Maybe it was all different scientists." Will shook his head. "I just can't stop thinking, _wondering_... Why do they need _two_ falcons?"

"Maybe," I said, "it doesn't matter now. We're free. As long as we stick together and keep an eye out, we're free. Whatever they wanted the both of us for, it doesn't matter. Not now."

"What if one of us was a mistake?" Will wondered, his face gone disturbingly pale. "What if _that's_ why? So close in age... Same bird DNA in both of us... Jen and the other little girl have a bigger age gap than us, Allie." He swallowed hard. "They made me first, I'm older. What if I was the mistake and you're the improved specimen?"

"We're _all_ mistakes," I said firmly. "Me, you, Marco, Jen, Lance, the other flock... _All _of us. They shouldn't have done this to us. It was _wrong_. They had no right to ruin our lives."

"Erasers," Will said, "don't live that long. How long do you think _we_ have?"

I sat down beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. "Longer." At least, I hoped so.

He chuckled at that. "I guess I'm going first."

"Why you?"

"Oldest." He shrugged.

"You're _not_ dying first," I insisted.

"Why not?"

"Because, I'm not letting you go that easy. You're not leaving me alone to take care of the others."

Will turned his head and smiled at me.

"Are you scared?" I wanted to know.

"Not of dying, really." He wrung his hands and pulled his knees closer to his chest. "More of not figuring it out."

"Figuring out _what_?"

"Just life in general." He rested his wrists on the top of his knees. "Of not having time to have a purpose in all this, of not being useful in this world before I have to leave it. I want to do something _good_, Allie. That's why I want to be the president. I don't want to fight for no reason except staying out of the School, or even hide away here, my whole life. I want to do something great."

"You _are_ great," I assured him.

"You really think so?"

I nodded. "And all great people feel like this. I'm sure of it. Even if they're not part bird."

"Thanks, Allie."

"You're welcome."

"Did you see Marco when you came out here?" he asked.

I thought for a moment. "No. Did you?"

He shook his head. "Was hoping you would. Even if he took off, I figured he'd be back by now."

"He's probably fine." My voice cracked a little and I coughed to clear my throat. "I'm sure he'll be back soon."

Except, for some reason I couldn't explain, I wasn't. Not really.

**AN: please review.**


	7. 7

Here's the problem when you're in a family that's on the run and/or in hiding, when you're not a normal kid: when someone goes missing, you can't call the cops.

(Just like there was nothing we could do when Mr. Moore disappeared. Nothing but mourn and try to keep living like he taught us.)

Yeah, okay, so I get that even if we'd been totally normal, even if Mr. Moore was still with us and (for argument's sake) our legal guardian, we probably couldn't have filed a missing person report on Marco for twenty-four hours. Which, of course, was longer than he'd actually been gone. And, naturally, there wasn't going to be much fuss over some dark-haired, skinny but tough teenager who could have easily passed for a gang member. If he'd been a fully human kid (no wings), I'm pretty sure the cops wouldn't have been overly concerned about him. Privately, they'd probably just think he ran away. (If things were a little different, maybe I would have, too.) There'd have been no, like, Amber Alerts on the radio or whatever. But _still_.

Still, it was a reminder of how helpless we were.

How helpless Will and I, as leaders of the family, were.

This was one of our worse nightmares. At least, I know it was one of _mine_. It was always on my mind. What if one of us got sick or went missing? There was nothing we could do. Go out and look, if we were careful, maybe. Sit and wait, mostly.

Needless to say here, Marco never came home that night. The last time any of us saw him that day was when he stormed out after picking on Miles.

It was just like him to take off. But it wasn't like him _at all _not to come back.

"Will?" Jen, looking much younger than fifteen with her hair pulled into braided pigtails, dressed in a billowy nightgown, said softly, her voice sort of shaky. "Marco _is _coming back, isn't he?" She was supposedly only up to get a drink of water, but I knew the real reason was because, just like the rest of us, she couldn't sleep. She was too worried. "You don't think he would just... _Leave _us. Do you?"

"No, Jen," he said softly, forcing a weak smile. "Don't worry, he'll be back soon."

"I'll deny it if you bring this up again later," Miles said, "but I'm really going to miss him."

"He's only been gone a few hours," I said. "Stop talking about him like that." _Like he's gone for good. _

"Come on, Allie," Miles said realistically. "You're thinking it, too. If he doesn't come back, and we know he wouldn't just leave by choice..."

"He's not dead," I insisted. "Not like Moore." Deep down, I knew why Miles was saying it, but I also kind of hated him for it at the time.

"I know _that's_ not what you're worried about." It was like he was reading my mind. Sometimes, given all his weird future-seeing abilities, I found myself wondering if maybe he _was_. "He's more use to the School alive than dead."

"Unless they want to dissect him like those frogs we saw on TV," Lance said.

Jen whimpered. Her lower lip started trembling uncontrollably.

"_Lance_," said Will warningly, reaching out and touching her shoulder. "It's okay, Jen. It's okay. Everything's fine."

Hours ticked by. The sun came up. We'd been awake all night, waiting.

Well, _most_ of us, anyway. Miles, despite his best efforts, had conked out an hour before sunrise, his left cheek pressed against the side of the island in the kitchen, and his snoring was currently droning out the _tick-tick-tick_ of a baseball-patterned clock in the living room and our own nervous sounds of finger-tapping and extra-loud heartbeats.

That was it, then. Marco really wasn't coming home. But, no, I couldn't accept it. He might have been a pain, not particularly tidy, grumpy as sin, and constantly in a peeved-off mood, but he was family. Marco, Will, Miles, Lance, and Jen were all I had. They were the closest things I'd ever had to siblings; we'd fought over personal space, stolen each others' things, given each other the silent treatment upon occasion, comforted one another, laughed with (and _at_) one another... I couldn't imagine feeling quite the same even about my _real_ family as I felt for those five. That is, if ever I'd had one, and knew them.

_Please come home, Marco, please don't be dead...or worse_, I thought, kind of pathetically.

"Miles, it's morning." Will leaned over the island to shake his shoulder.

"It's a _coke_, Officer," Miles mumbled, still asleep and dreaming. "I don't drink with monkey mutants."

"_Miles_," I put in, a little louder.

"Monkey with duck DNA has my wallet," he murmur-moaned. "Can't believe I forgot my ID."

Lance clapped his hand down on his back, causing Miles to jump up out of the stool and shout, "It wasn't me!" He blinked, rubbed his eyes, looked around, and remembered. "Sorry," he yawned. "I thought I was just resting my eyes for a minute."

"He's still not here," Will said.

"Mmm," said Miles, not sounding all that surprised.

"Listen," Jen said, tilting her head.

"The door!" I gasp-exclaimed under my breath, ready to sigh with relief when Marco walked in.

"Phew!" Lance sighed.

But it wasn't Marco who walked through the entryway and into the kitchen. It was a sleazy-looking, wolfish guy, about six feet tall, gross, hairy, and freakishly buff. An Eraser.

"Allie...?" whimpered Miles. "Am I having nightmares again?"

"N-no... I see it, too," I confirmed, shaking.

Jen was so scared she vomited on the floor, then went "Ahh..." and fainted. (Frankly, if it weren't for the fact that I was sure the Eraser would still either kill me or bring me back to the School, and probably rip me to shreds, whether I was conscious or not, I think I almost would have wanted to do the same thing. Luckily, most of us can't black out on demand.)

Thankfully, Lance caught her, so she didn't hurt hit her head when she lost consciousness and dropped just like... Well, just like an injured bird, actually.

The Eraser smiled right at me, his stare slow, suggestive, and ice cold, but went around the island and lurched at Will instead.

Flapping my wings for immediate take-off, I flew over as quickly as I could and, flinging open a draw under the counter, grabbed the biggest kitchen knife we had in the house.

Kicking the Eraser in the face as I came down in front of him and holding out my knife warningly, I shouted, "Stay away from him!"

Growling, his mouth looking way more muzzle-like than human mouth-ish, he jumped at me.

My knife went into his shoulder. Unfortunately, his _teeth _went into mine.

I screamed and tried to knee him in the crotch, though I only actually got the side of his disgustingly muscular thigh. Next thing I knew, I was on my back, the knife's hilt starting to slip from my grasp because my palms were getting slick with sweat, and that stupid brute was pinning me down. A number of heavy drops of hot red blood from his hurt shoulder landed on my neck, confirming that I'd done him at least _some _actual harm, but I knew I hadn't exactly fatally injured him or anything. Rats.

Will tried to help me, but the Eraser reached up and shoved him back, still holding me down with his other hand, knocking him against the sink.

"Allie!" Miles threw a brick at the Eraser's head.

I made a mental note to ask him where he'd swiped that brick from, you know, _after_ I got out from under the giant wolf-man and woke up Jen and made sure Will was okay. (Later, I found a right-sized gap and a dirty spoon in one of the fireplaces.) Sadly, though, the brick didn't knock the Eraser out; he just got even madder. This seems, for some reason, to happen _every_ time Miles attempts to fight off an Eraser, physically or verbally. Too much wit and not enough Kung-fu fighting skills, I guess.

That was when I saw, in a blur, a foot come and kick the Eraser. It wouldn't have done much good if the Eraser had seen it coming, but, luckily, he hadn't. Surprise made him slide half off of me long enough for myself and the helpful pair of arms (which I took for granted had to belong to Will) to roll him over. Then I got a better grip on my knife and, gritting my teeth cuz of the pain in my bitten shoulder, stabbed him in the chest.

The Eraser, who must have been getting up in age (because no _way_ would two stabs have killed a young mutant on top of his game, in the prime of his short life), died.

And I looked up in relief.

Will was _just_ getting up from his place next to the sink, limping, hunched over slightly because he'd hit his lower back really hard. Possibly, he'd dislocated something.

But then who'd helped me?

Whoever it was, they were standing behind me. Exactly where I'd wrongly assumed _Will_ was a second ago.

Almost scared, I let my head turn.

I saw Miles and Lance gaping in shock.

"Who...?"

Then I saw for myself.

It was Mr. Moore.

"Hey, kids," he said, forcing a half-smile, obviously too worked up to do any better. "How have you been?"


	8. 8

He didn't look so swift. His hair was ruffled and one of the lenses on his glasses looked a bit scratched up. Also, I noticed there were a few holes in his gray tweed sports jacket. But he was _alive_, and here, right in front of us, returned to the mansion out of nowhere like a ghost or something.

"You're alive," said Will, his forehead crinkled.

"Very observant, William," Mr. Moore replied, his half-smile deepening.

"We thought you were dead," I explained.

Miles was rendered totally and completely speechless, for once in his life. He seemed unable to do anything except blink repeatedly at Mr. Moore and open and close his mouth soundlessly.

Jen woke up and almost fainted again when she saw Mr. Moore. "I... I don't understand..." she stammered.

Lance kept her upright. "He saved us again, Jen."

"Well, saved _Allie_, anyway," Miles finally managed to blurt out.

I turned and shot him a quick half-glare. "Who do you think the Eraser would have gone after next?" _Maybe the kid who threw a _brick _at his head?_

Miles paled.

"Where have you been?" Will asked Mr. Moore.

"It's a long story," he said, shaking his head. "I wanted to come back so many times, but I couldn't."

"Why not?" Miles ask-demanded.

I was wondering the same thing. Why couldn't he have come back? Why couldn't he, at the very least, have done something-_anything_, really-to let us know he wasn't dead? How could he have let us mourn him all this time, thinking he was never, ever coming back, that we six were totally alone in the world?

"I thought I was being followed." He looked down at the dead Eraser on the kitchen floor. "Obviously, I wasn't mistaken."

"So, you came here first," Lance said, slowly, like he was making sure he'd gotten the story straight, "and the Eraser came after, but it got in the house before you did."

Mr. Moore nodded. "I couldn't compromise your location entirely. I thought I'd lost anything-or any_one_-tracking me, but when I finally got up the nerves to come near the house, I saw the Eraser, and I hid in the woodsy area. Sadly, it was too late; he'd seen. He'd seen the house, and possibly he put two-and-two together..."

"Maybe you shouldn't have come back at all," Jen said quietly.

"Jen!" I snapped.

"He led the Eraser here," she said, her voice not accusing, as I think practically anyone else's might have been in that situation, talking like that, but plain factual instead. "Others might be coming. If he'd stayed away, we..."

"Don't worry about it," Mr. Moore told us. "You're safe now. I'm back and I'm going to look after you again. Not that you've been doing so bad on your own, it seems." He smiled approvingly at myself and Will. "I'm very proud of you."

I noticed Miles looked pretty disappointed when Moore didn't turn and smile at _him_ next. I understood his feelings. Sure, he wasn't a leader; he hadn't been running the show. Not like Will and I had. But he'd always been so close to Mr. Moore, one of the few people who'd usually admired or even _praised _him for his intellect instead of treating it like a handicap or an annoyance. I was sure he wanted approval from this returned-from-the-dead version of Mr. Moore even more desperately than he'd wanted it before as a little kid.

"Anyway, all of you, pack whatever you need and get ready to go. If there was a tracking devise in the Eraser, there's no telling when the next one will be here. And I'm sure he won't be alone." He looked each of us in the face. "Wait, where's Marco?"

Will hung his head.

"We don't know," I answered.

Miles swallowed hard, his cheeks going red as he stared at his feet.

"We're real sorry, Moore," Lance said. "We tried to stick together. Really we did."

"I know you did," Mr. Moore said, in a tone I guess was meant to be comforting, though I think it just made us all feel even _more_ guilty. "I'm sure you did everything you could."

"If we have to leave," I said, suddenly getting an idea, "we should go look for him."

"That's a great idea!" said Will, brightening. "Allie, you're brilliant. She's right, Mr. Moore; if we have to go on the run for a while anyway, we should look for Marco."

"What if he's at the School?" Miles pointed out.

"Then we'll bust him out," I decided. "Mr. Moore got us out once. He can help us get Marco out again." I looked at him expectantly. "Right?"

He sighed. "I don't know, Allie. The security is different now. The technology is very much improved."

"But we can _try_, can't we?" I pressed.

"We'll see. For now I've got to get you five out of here, out of danger. Start packing."

We went through the house quickly but carefully. I don't think there was a room we used that we didn't go into to make sure we weren't leaving anything important behind or to reassure ourselves there was nothing in them we needed to survive. (This was when I saw the missing brick in the fireplace I mentioned before.) We unplugged most of the electronics while we were at it, and Mr. Moore flipped off the power switch on the breaker.

In the end, we took hardly anything with us. Just some clothes that had been cut to fit our wings, each in our own small backpack (which we always strapped dangling from the lower part of our arms so they didn't get in the way of our wings while we flew), long-lasting food products that were easy to transport (granola bars, beef jerky, etc...), and a few toiletries.

Also, Miles went sort of mental and decided to smuggle a book the size of a freaking _dictionary_ wrapped up in some of his clothes, even after Mr. Moore told us not to bring any.

Books, he'd pointed out, were heavy and would only weigh us down.

But, the thing is, I can't be too hard on Miles for what he did. Because I did the same thing. I took a book with me, too. Really, I just couldn't help myself. I saw it again, passing the book-cart: that volume about King Arthur, written by Mr. and Mrs. Pennington. Something inside me just _snapped_. I couldn't leave it. Those writers were my little link to stability in my messed up life. Mr. Moore wouldn't have liked it, I knew, but I felt I had no choice. So I put it in with my clothes and hoped no one would wonder why both Miles _and_ I had a slightly heavier backpacks than the rest of the flock.

With any luck, I figured no one except for me would have to carry mine, anyway. If they were, it would probably be because I was hurt or whatever.

Frankly, I don't know why I assumed we'd be flying. I mean, Mr. Moore didn't even _have_ wings! And it wasn't like we could leave him behind. There was no way we were going to lose him again. He_ came back_ for us! As confusing as it all was, why should anything else have mattered?

Looking back, though, I wish I'd thought more clearly, used my brain a lot more. Mr. Moore hadn't said anything about a van when he told us about the Eraser following him. All scratched up as he was, it wasn't too far of a jump to conclude he'd been on his feet for a long time. But, being trusting, and maybe a little stupid, I didn't think anything was up when he had us all pile into this van parked a mile from the house.

In my defense, though, even Miles was totally taken in, and he's supposed to be the smart one.

So, yeah...

**AN: Pleaseth to Review? **


	9. 9

"It's not me," Marco said, shaking his head at the couple sitting across from him. He slid the photograph they'd put out in front of him back towards them, across the kitchen table. "I'm sorry."

Mr. Pennington smiled sadly. "I think I knew that."

"Then why did you help me?" Marco wanted to know, raising an eyebrow.

He gestured with his tilted head over at his wife. "Hey, don't thank _me_. _She_ did most of the helping."

"We just thought maybe our boy was trapped," Mrs. Pennington said meekly. "Just like you were. We couldn't leave you like that."

"I can't thank you enough," Marco told them, his tone gruff but sincere. "There's hardly ever a man and woman with a tall ladder and a crowbar when you need them."

"But..." Mr. Pennington put in, faltering.

Marco looked up from the navy blue mug of tea he was sipping because it was too hot to swallow down in one long gulp without burning his throat.

"You... None of the others... Other experimented-on kids..." His voice cracked as he struggled to force the words out. "None of them look like our Arthur?" His eyes, focused intently on Marco's face, glanced down at the photo again, then at his wife, before resettling.

"Not particularly," Marco said.

The photo showed a young blond boy, maybe thirteen or so, standing on a wooden pool deck, squinting a little, like the sun was in his eyes.

This boy was Mr. and Mrs. Pennington's son. Or he _had_ been. Before the accident. Before they'd lost him. Now they'd thought maybe, even though it wouldn't be the same, they'd found a way of getting him back. Marco hated letting them down after they'd helped him, but a) he had no idea what his next planned move was and b) he really _hadn't_ seen anyone at the lab, bird kid or 'other', who looked a thing like him.

The kid they'd be looking for would have to be _something_ like Arthur, seeing that they'd share a significant amount of DNA...

"There is another flock," Marco admitted. "Maybe he's with them." Somehow, though, he doubted it. There was this nagging feeling in his gut. "Except, do you think...?"

"Yes?" Mrs. Pennington said, almost in a whisper.

"If there was this guy," Marco mused aloud, "who didn't look like Arthur, but acted like him... I mean, lots of things you've told me, about Arthur, _does_ remind me of someone. Someone I know real well. It's just... He doesn't look a thing like him." _Or like either of you_, he added, in his head. "If he could be..."

"It's possible." Mr. Pennington looked over at his wife. They were professors and writers, not scientists, but what they did know about science seemed to confirm that maybe-_just maybe_-the one they were looking for, waiting for, and hoping for, didn't look like they expected but was still _like_ him, just on the _inside_.

That was all that really mattered, anyway. They didn't care what he looked like; they didn't care if he had, as he probably _did_, wings like poor Marco sitting there in front of them right then. Whatever happened, whoever he was now, they just wanted him back.

"Who is it that reminds you of Arthur?" Mrs. Pennington asked, not realizing she was holding her breath while waiting for the answer.

Marco swallowed hard and took a deep breath. For so long he'd believed that he, unlike most of the rest of the flock, had an actual blood-related brother. If he was right _now_, about Arthur, it meant he'd been dead wrong all this time. He was just as alone as the rest of the flock. If not even _more_ so.

"William," he said finally. "But we call him Will."

**AN: I know this chapter is really short and what-not, but for the heck of it, I'll ask anywho... Any chance of reviews? **


	10. 10

"Allie?"

"Hmm?" I rolled over. "What, Miles?"

We were all sleeping in the van, under a vacant tunnel that was closed off for the night (but luckily only one side of it was officially blocked, with like cones and stuff, so as long as we backed out of there before it was open for business again, we were good to go). I was sprawled out across the long (but uncomfortably narrow) back seat, while Miles had one of the two adjustable seats directly in front of me. Will was in the other seat, across from him; Lance slept on the carpeted van floor, a flat pillow in an all-star Pixar characters pillowcase bunched up under his chin; Jen had the passenger seat and a plaid lap-blanket; and Mr. Moore was, of course, dozing in the driver's seat.

I'd thought I was the only one still awake, my face pressed against the vinyl and some other, softer material I don't know the name of, almost smothered.

Apparently, though, Miles couldn't sleep either. "Are you scared?" he asked.

I saw he was leaning over the back of his seat to talk to me, and I wondered how he knew I was still awake.

No, I wanted to say, I'm not scared at all. You? But, that's not what came out. "More like freaked out." I sighed. "And _mad_. Really, really mad." Why couldn't they just leave us_ alone_? Hadn't the people at the School already hurt us _enough_?

"Yeah, somehow I doubt _you _being mad scares _them_," Miles said.

"Well, it _should_," I snapped. They'd taken Marco (most likely), driven us out of our home, and kept Mr. Moore from coming home earlier, because he was afraid of being followed; they'd awakened the sleeping half-bird giant. And guess what? The giant was not a happy camper.

"Maybe they know they have the advantage," Miles suggested.

I snorted. "We have wings, can run fast, are thinner and stronger than most humans, and we could probably kick the tar out of a white coat if it came to a one-on-one fight." Not a pretty image, but, like I said, I was mad. And seriously overtired.

"Sure," Miles countered, his tone laced with sarcasm. "And they only have Erasers, tasers, the power of medical science, several giant cages, hidden cameras, raw determination, and, for all we know, the power to control us from a distance. Yeah, you're right, we're going to win."

"Wait, what are you talking about, 'power to control us from a distance'?" I wanted to know.

"It's..." He looked nervous. "This theory, I... It's nothing. If they could do what I think they could, they would have gotten us back to the School long before now."

"No, tell me."

He shook his head. "I can't."

"Of course you can. It's alright."

"No, I can't tell any of you."

"Why not?"

"I'm already enough of a freak, Allie," Miles said, looking sort of like he wanted to cry, almost. "The last thing I need is a reason for you guys to leave me behind."

"I would never leave you behind!" I exclaimed. "What...?" Where was this coming from? "_None_ of us would _ever_ do that to you, Miles. Don't you _know_ that? What's gotten into you?"

"What if there was something in me that the white coats could use against us, to their advantage?" he asked. "Something I had no control over."

"What is it?"

"You know I see the future sometimes."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, where do those visions _come _from?"

"God?" I said, joking, trying to lighten him up a bit.

"Not funny, Allie. Be serious."

"So they did something messed up to your brain and you see things." I blinked, confused. "We've been dealing with it practically forever. Why is it bothering you _now_?"

"I keep thinking..."

"What?"

"That vision I had," he said, "about Marco. That last one, when I saw what he was going to do to me a day in advance. It didn't come true."

"Okay. So what?"

"So this is pretty much the first time that's happened." He looked scared. "What does that mean? What about all the times I tried to change the future, to see if it always came true, and it happened anyway?"

"Maybe you just had to stop trying so hard."

"Allie, what if my visions (well, some of them, anyway), come from the people at the School? What if they can control my mind somehow, make me see whatever they want? Get me off my guard and then..."

"Miles, that's crazy." _He_ was crazy, actually, but that wasn't the point. "They'd have to know the future, and a whole lot of other stuff that they couldn't possibly know about. What they did to your brain, they're probably messing around with things they don't fully get. I seriously doubt they have that much control over what you see."

"So what if that's true?" Miles pressed. "What if they have no control over it? What if no one does? Including me. Doesn't that make me defective? What are they going to do to me if..."

"Hey!" I whisper-snapped. "They aren't going to do _anything_ to you. And you know why? Because I'm your friend and I'm going to protect you. We're all going to stand by each other, and we've got Moore now, and we're going to get Marco back and figure things out, and everything is going to be fine! _Understand_?"

He nodded.

"Good," I said firmly, rolling over so that I was facing away from him again.

"Allie?"

"Yeah?" I said, without turning around, the back of the seat muffling my voice.

"You promise?" His voice sounded so small.

Stupidly, I half-wanted to cry. I hated it when he was like this. When his snark failed him and he actually seemed like nothing but a scared teenage boy. I scooted so that my wrist wasn't under the weight of my hip anymore and ended up flat on my back, my other arm dangling over the edge of the seat, and my face looking up at the car's ceiling.

"I _promise_, Miles."


	11. 11

"All right," said Mr. Moore, clearing his throat and ducking his head (and his arms, up to his elbows; there was one of those fast food type cardboard multi-cup holders he was gripping with both hands) into the open van window on the passenger side. "I've got coffee for everyone."

"Um..." Jen started.

"Hot tea with a cinnamon stick for you, Jen."

Her mouth closed with an almost audible (but clearly satisfied) click.

I glanced nervously at Miles. Will and Lance can handle a full cup of coffee, whereas, trust me, you _really_ don't want to see what Miles is like all jacked up on caffeine.

Given, it _can_ be semi-amusing, no debating that, but it gets old fast. And I mean _real_ fast. And don't even get me _started _on the level of bodily gas too much strong coffee in one sitting gives him... Yes, in short, it's seriously every bit as _'ewww_' as it sounds. And _then_ some...

"And a decaf for Miles, naturally." The corner of one of Mr. Moore's eyes twitched, suggesting a wink in my direction.

I smiled. It was so great having him back. Mr. Moore seemed to remember _everything_. Every single, tiny detail about our old childhood habits, moods, and needs. It really was like he'd come back from the dead. If only we'd still had Marco with us (well, that, and not had a now-dead Eraser for a house-guest thus forcing us permanently out of the only place we'd ever been able to even remotely refer to as home), I was sure it would have been completely perfect.

The van was currently parked in the back lot of a coffeehouse with faded, peeling, Barbie-pink shingles.

I knew we couldn't stay long (it was too public, an entire freeway had a disturbingly close view of us; Moore wouldn't even let us out of the van, which was why he'd gone in and gotten our coffee _for_ us), but it was kind of nice. The lot wasn't as littered as some fast-food places (like the McDonald's across the street, for instance) and instead of a bunch of noisy wannabe gangsters there were all these friendly-looking ladies in their fifties driving their little Volkswagens and stuff. They hadn't even seemed to notice us sitting in the van with the windows cracked, waiting for Mr. Moore.

I wondered, if I had real parents somewhere, if they hung out at coffeehouses. Or if maybe _their_ parents, my would-be grandparents, did. But I figured that, most likely, I'd never know. Not for sure.

Miles played by himself with a set of mathematics flash cards (don't ask, cuz frankly I have _no idea _where he got them from) while drinking his decaf. Will sort of nursed his cup, taking small sips. Jen blew on her tea a lot, shrugging and mentioning to Lance that it was too hot. Lance drank all of his down in a steady gulp then crushed the cup against his head like I've seen jocks and sports professionals on TV commercials do to soda cans.

I didn't pay much attention to how I drank mine. I just knew it was good, and that, after all we'd been through, I sure as heck needed it. The coffee warmed my stomach and made me think straight. My head felt much better. (I'd had a slight headache since shortly after I woke up; I didn't put two-and-two together and figure out it was probably just a caffeine withdrawal until right then, though.)

The only problem was nature decided to call right after I was finished.

Mr. Moore didn't want me going into the bathroom at the coffeehouse, and I could tell he totally wished he'd hit the gas and driven off the second he'd given us our cups instead of taking the risk, hanging around a bit longer. But I was so not going in a bush. Especially since the bushes around there weren't even two feet tall. Just like the freeway could see our van, I was pretty sure if I tried to, um, _go_, in public, a whole line of traffic would see.

I guess, in the end, Moore had to agree with me. There really was no choice. I knew he wanted to keep me safe, but when you gotta go, you gotta go. He let me go in, though he insisted I move fast and not talk to anyone.

Looking both ways, I swung open the glass door to the coffeehouse. A set of brass bells rung as it slammed shut behind me.

I was on my way to the bathroom when I noticed someone, out of the corner of my eye. _Two_ someones, actually. Two faces I had seen recently on the back of a King Arthur book.

Mr. and Mrs. Pennington.

They looked, even from the small distance between us (the coffeehouse was really small inside, and most of it was filled up with a big glass-cased doughnut counter, so there wasn't much to it), exactly the same as their photographs. Well, more _real_, obviously, but totally and completely the same other than that. I didn't even have to do a double-take to recognize them.

I found myself wanting, stupidly, to run over and talk to them. To hear what their voices sounded like, to see if they wouldn't even give me the time of day... I didn't care what was said. I was just suddenly desperate to interact with them.

I knew what Mr. Moore would say. Heck, I knew what he would _think_. He'd think I was taking a risk and that I should keep walking. He knew I couldn't trust them.

_I_, I figured, should have known that too. It was unbelievably dumb of me, no question, to even _pretend_ I could trust them. I couldn't trust anyone except for the flock and Mr. Moore. No one else would keep us safe. Only a complete idiot would want to walk up to two strangers like I was aching to.

Grinding my teeth together and clenching my jaw, I was about to force myself to just go and then get back out to the van. I was going to be good, do what Moore expected of me. After all, he probably deserved that much loyalty, that much common sense, at least, after all he'd done for me and the rest of the flock.

But then I saw they weren't alone.

There was someone else with them: a thin, sort of angsty-faced, teenage boy. One, who as a matter of fact, I knew had been missing. One I'd been worried sick about and wanted both to slap and hug at the same time. One whose presence there made no sense and confused the living daylights out of me.

He sat at the far end of one of only two booths in the entire coffeehouse, a hoodie pulled over his head, but not so far that his face was covered.

And I knew he had to be there with the Penningtons, because Mrs. Pennington handed him a small pastry wrapped in a white paper napkin and said something I couldn't hear over the general noise of the place (clanging plates, people moving around behind the counters, customers chatting about six decibels louder than they actually needed to) that I guessed was to the effect of, "Here eat this. You're too thin."

I slowly but steadily made my way closer to them.

"Kid's going to eat us out of house and home," mumbled Mr. Pennington.

I wasn't sure if he was serious or joking or whatever, but his voice wasn't mean, and that was good enough for me.

Besides, as curious as I was about them, Mr. and Mrs. Pennington were no longer my main concerns at the moment.

That honor, right that second, belonged to their pastry-scarfing guest.

I marched straight up to the table, as soon as a path had cleared and a janitor carrying a mop and one of those big yellow buckets with wheels moved out of my way. "Marco!"

**AN: Reviews welcome!**


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